He changed to a soft collar, and when he descended to the patio to join Billy once more he was, to all outward appearances, his usual unperturbed self, for his was one of those rare natures that can derive a certain comfort from the misery of self-sacrifice—and in that five minutes alone in his room John Stuart Webster had wrestled with the tragedy of his life and won.
He had resolved to give Billy the right of way on the highway to happiness.
CHAPTER XV
LATE in the afternoon of the day of his arrival in Buenaventura, in the cool recess of the deep veranda flanking the western side of the patio of the Hotel Mateo, John Stuart Webster sat in a wicker chair, cigar in mouth, elbows on knees, hands clasping a light Malacca stick, with the end of which he jabbed meditatively at a crack in the recently sprinkled tiled floor, as if punctuating each bitter thought that chased its predecessor through his somewhat numbed brain.
In Mr. Webster's own whimsical phraseology, his clock had been fixed, on the instant he recognized in the object of his youthful partner's adoration the same winsome woman he had enthroned in his own secret castle of love. From that precise second Billy's preserve was as safe from encroachment by his friend as would be a bale of Confederate currency in an armour-steel vault on the three-thousand-foot level of a water-filled mine. Unfortunately for Webster, however, while he knew himself fairly well, he was not aware of this at the time. Viewed in the light of calmer reflection, Mr. Webster was quite certain he had made a star-spangled monkey of himself.
He sought solace now in the fact that there had been mitigating circumstances. Throughout the entire journey from the steamer to the hotel, Billy had not once mentioned in its entirety the name of his adored one. In any Spanish-American country the name Dolores is not so uncommon as to excite suspicion; and Webster who had seen the mercurial William in and out of many a desperate love affair in the latter's brittle teens and early twenties, attached so little importance to this latest outbreak of the old disease that it did not occur to him to cross-examine Billy, after eliciting the information that the young man had not lost his heart to a local belle.
The knowledge that Billy's inamorata was an American girl served to clear what threatened to be a dark atmosphere, and so Webster promptly had dismissed the subject.
Any psychologist will tell one that it is quite possible for a person to dream, in the short space of a split second, of events which, if really consummated, would involve the passage of days, weeks, months, or even years! Now, Jack Webster was an extra fast thinker, asleep or awake, and in his mind's eye, as he sat there in the patio, he had a dreadful vision of himself with a delicate spray of lilies of the valley in the lapel of his dress coat, as he supported the malarial Billy to the altar, there to receive the promise of Dolores to love, honour, and obey until death them did part. As the said Billy's dearest friend and business associate—as the only logical single man available—the job was Webster's without a struggle. Diablo! Why did people persist in referring to such runners-up in the matrimonial handicap as best men, when at the very least calculation the groom was the winner?